


oops I did it again

by Anonymous



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Implied/Referenced Biphobia, enemies to acquaintances with benefits to lovers, extremely background sirius/remus, james is having a heart attack for like 99 per cent of this, pining for the person you're having sex with, so you accidentally hooked up with your hot archnemesis: an autobiography by lily evans
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-14 21:48:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29178228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Annoyance, a deep, visceral annoyance that only Potter seems capable of generating, stirs up within her. Part of her still wants to storm out and away from him, another part wants to smack that smirk off his face, and a third very secret part that should never have existed in the first place can’t stop thinking about that photo, about her mouth on his, about his long fingers rucking up the hem of her shirt.If she leaves now, she reasons, he’ll have gotten the last say, and that’d be absolutely no fair.So she stalks over, plants her hands on her hips, and looks up at him. “Alright, new deal,” she says. “One kiss — one real kiss — and then you get it out of your system.”(Spoiler alert: Neither of them gets anything out of their system.)
Relationships: James Potter/Lily Evans Potter
Comments: 4
Kudos: 41
Collections: Anonymous





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is the horniest thing I've ever written, I'm so sorry, I don't even go here

Lily meets James Potter on her first day of classes. She sits across from him in freshman seminar and finds her eyes immediately drawn to him. He’s focused on his book with a quiet intensity, bent over in his chair, face scrunched up in concentration, black hair falling into his face. He looks so cute and so serious. She’s working up the courage to say hello when some other boys appear behind him and one says, “Don’t tell me you left all the reading until five minutes before class, you idiot.”

The boy breaks away from his reading and cracks a wide grin. Lily’s image of the sweet studious boy across from her shatters as he whoops in greeting and starts chattering with his friends. His copy of _The Great Gatsby_ is abandoned on the table as he leans far back in his chair and tousles his hair with one hand.

Lily had been hoping that college boys would be different from high school. More intellectual, more distinguished. Actually interesting to talk to. The display in front of her dashes those dreams as she realizes that boys are always just _boys_.

This is further confirmed later on when another guy in their seminar starts ranting about how awful Daisy is, how all of the events of the book are her fault, how Gatsby would never have had to die if she hadn’t led him on.

“You’re kidding me” slips out of Lily’s mouth before she’s able to contain it, and the professor turns towards her.

“Something to share, Miss Evans?”

“I just— I think that reading is entirely misguided. The problem is not Daisy’s actions but Gatsby’s distorted view of her. We’re supposed to recognize that he overly romanticizes her and puts everything on her rather than taking any responsibility for himself. I think that your reading is actually falling into the trap that Fitzgerald wants to steer us away from.”

“Nice point, Miss Evans,” remarks the professor. “Would anyone care to respond?”

Lily notices that the boy across from her is looking up at her like he’s seeing her for the very first time (and he may well be, since he’s spent the entire class trading notes with his friend instead of paying attention to the discussion). When he catches her eye a slow grin spreads across his face, and she quickly looks back to the professor.

After seminar he grabs her wrist as she’s trying to leave the room.

“Lily, right? James Potter. I just wanted to say that your takedown of Mulciber was the hottest thing I’ve ever seen. I seriously might be in love with you.”

“Uh, thanks, I guess,” she says, because it seems the polite response. “But you do get that my point was about the problems of men romanticizing women, right? Especially ones that they don’t know.”

His grin is far too cocky to be trustworthy. “Well, maybe I should get to know you better,” he says. “What do you say, wanna go out sometime?” He tousles his hair again and — why? Why must he do that? Does he have some kind of rare condition that will cause his hair to fall out if it isn’t artfully mussed at least once every five minutes?

“It’s the start of the semester, I’m kind of busy,” Lily says.

“I can wait,” he smirks.

“Until you meet someone cuter in your next class, I’m sure.”

He places his hands over his heart. “You wound me, Lily. My love is not nearly so fickle.”

She glances at her watch. “I have to go meet someone,” she lies. “See you next week.”

  
  
  


The following things happen in between their first meeting and Lily’s senior year:

  1. She spends a year doing her best to avoid James Potter, and it’s surprisingly easy. Admittedly, he does his best to make it difficult by asking her out literally every time they are in the same room (including a particularly memorable Valentine’s Day ask which involved the entire Men’s Rugby team dancing to ABBA’s “Take a Chance On Me” in the dining hall with breathtaking choreography). But Lily’s life is soon filled with enough to distract her. She focuses on her classes and joins the staff of the school newspaper.
  2. She meets Severus Snape. He’s the first real friend she makes in college and therefore her best friend. The other friends she makes later, like Mary Macdonald, don’t understand their friendship, but Lily doesn’t care. Severus is kind to her, and supportive, and makes her laugh. Even better, he’s more than happy to sit with her and complain about what an awful human Potter is. Their freshman year, they go everywhere together.  
  

  3. In her sophomore year, she comes out as bisexual. Severus is the one who stays up until 2 am on the phone with her during Christmas break while she cries about her family’s reaction.  
  
“Don’t let Petunia get to you,” he says. “She’s an idiot, and probably just jealous of you because you’re smart and pretty and confident and she’s too ordinary. Nothing she says matters.”  
  
Lily doesn’t particularly agree with his assessment of her sister, but his words are comforting when she’s sobbing over Petunia’s cruelty.


  1. Everything falls apart in her junior year. Severus starts hanging out with Avery and Mulciber and Lily can’t fathom what he sees in them. He starts making jokes that make her uncomfortable and when she asks him to stop, he gets upset that she’s so sensitive. He makes a snide comment about Mary’s weight at dinner one night and doesn’t understand why Lily wants him to apologize. Sometimes Lily looks at her best friend and doesn’t recognize him.  
  

  2. Lily experiences the worst day of her life. She’s coming out of the library and sees Potter and Severus shouting at each other in the quad. Everything unravels faster than she can understand: she’s running up to stop the fight, she tries tugging Sev’s arm to pull him away from Potter, he whirls around and roars “Back off, dyke!” And before she knows it his other hand hits her in the face, and then he’s bent over her saying “God, Lily, look what you made me do” while she tries to staunch the blood gushing from her nose.  
  
He stops by Mary’s room to talk to her later that day and tries to apologize. “Potter just makes me so mad, I was off my head,” he says. “It was an accident, I swear.”  
  
“Was it an accident when you called me a dyke?” she asks, and her friendship with Severus Snape is over.


  1. She spends the rest of the semester in a haze, crying in her room and dodging all around campus to avoid her former best friend. She goes abroad in the spring and does her best to clear her head. When she returns to campus the fall of her senior year she tells herself, “This year is going to be better. This year _has_ to be better.”



  
  


The year certainly gets off to a promising start. Lily is the editor of the newspaper now, and she’s excited about her tenure. She’s got a great staff (even though she had to reject some of the freshmen who applied to join, like that insane Rita Skeeter) and she has ideas for how to revamp their online presence. She has a single room on the same hall as Mary and their friend Alice is their RA. She decides, with her advisor’s support, to apply for law school.

“Senior year,” muses Lily. “It’s not really what I thought it would feel like.”

“What did you expect?” asks Mary.

“I thought I’d feel more, I dunno, competent? Definitely wiser.”

“You literally run the press on this campus. That’s competence,” Mary assures her.

“Like the radiant sun peeking through the clouds of a storm, Lily Evans has returned among us!”

“Jesus Christ,” Lily moans. “Some things really don’t change.”

Potter saunters over to their table. “The past nine months have been _agonizing_. Somehow you’ve managed to become even more beautiful during your time away — science didn’t think it possible, but I have a team of researchers working on it right now —”

“Hi James!” Mary says.

“What do you want, Potter?” Lily asks.

He looks mock-offended. (With Potter, everything is mock. Lily isn’t sure she’s ever seen him exhibit any real emotion.) “Why, the pleasure of your company and the blessing of your smile, of course.”

Sirius Black arrives besides Potter, followed quickly by Remus and Peter Pettigrew. “Lily! Mary! You guys coming to the party on Friday?”

Mary perks up. “Party?”

“You didn’t tell them?” Remus asks. “You ran — literally ran — away from us, across the dining hall, to invite them to this party and then you _didn’t invite them_?”

“I was wooing,” Potter explains. “And I didn’t run.”

“It was more of a sprint,” Peter agrees.

“Party this Friday in the courtyard!” Sirius says. “We’re celebrating senior year with _style_. I’m wearing a tux.”

“That’s not a dress code though, it’s just him,” Remus adds quickly.

“Alright, let’s get food, I’m starving,” Sirius says.

“I’ll save a dance for you, Evans,” James promises, and they’ve all vanished as quickly as they appeared.

Mary waggles her eyebrows at Lily. “Party. Lily, it’s a party! Senior year party!”

Lily sighs. “I don’t know, Mary. I’m already swamped with work. I might just want a quiet night in. I hear Alice is hosting a screening of Mulan for the freshmen.”

Mary frowns. “Don’t be a loser, Lils.”

Lily has every intention of being a loser until around 9 pm Friday night. She trips on her way from the snack bar and drops the bag full of Pringles cans she’d been carrying. She manages to scoop up most of them and then a pale hand appears, holding the last can. She looks up and an electric shock pierces her heart. It’s Severus.

“Lily,” he breathes. “Hi. How are you?”

“Fine,” she says stiffly. She’s shaking. It hurts to look at him.

“I’ve missed you,” he says. “Can we talk sometime?”

Fuck, she wanted to be so cool when she saw him again, to show him that she was over how much he hurt her, but instead here she is at 9pm on a Friday night scrambling around on the ground for cans of Pringles on her way to a Disney screening. And tears are starting to prick at her eyes.

“I’d really rather not,” she says, and pushes past him.

He calls after her but she doesn’t turn around, just presses forward until she’s alone in her room so she can dump all the Pringles cans on her bed and sob into her pillow. She feels so stupid and weak and cowardly and she cries until she runs out of breath. Then she sits up, goes over to her desk, downs a shot of tequila, and decides to join Mary at the party.

(So really, in the end, everything that happens next is all the Pringles’ fault.)

She wakes up to the most horrid noise she’s ever heard (namely, her 7:30 am phone alarm). She blearily silences it, primarily by tapping every inch of her phone screen. In the process she also opens her most recent notification, and that’s when her day really goes to shit.

She’s been tagged on Instagram by Rita Skeeter, who’s clearly holding a grudge about not making it onto the newspaper staff. A grudge which manifests in posting photos online of the newspaper’s editor snogging strange boys at parties.

Wait.

That’s not a strange boy.

Lily’s heart drops through her stomach and she suddenly finds herself more sober than she’s ever wanted to be. She stares in horror at the Instagram post, zooms in to make sure of the details, zooms out because that was far too much to handle, checks the comments to make sure no one’s seen it (they have), and untags herself.

This does not, however, resolve the fact that she is looking at a picture of herself kissing James Potter.

“Kissing” might be an understatement, even. Her hands are on his cheeks, cupping his face, and she can tell just from the way her own mouth appears glued to his that there’s definitely some tongue action going on. Her body is pressed up tightly against his, and his hands are on her waist, pushing up the hem of her shirt. His fingers are definitely on her bare skin, his thumb pressing into the curve of her hipbone.

It’s the worst thing she’s ever seen.

She texts Mary immediately (“I didn’t really kiss Potter last night, did I????”), and without bothering to wait for a response, runs down the hall to bang on Mary’s door.

No answer. Fuck. Mary has an early Saturday morning rehearsal, of course _of course_.

Lily runs back down the hall, throws on clothes, has three separate battles with her own psyche, and then, against her better judgement, runs up three flights of stairs.

She slams her fist into Potter’s door, definitely not imagining that it’s his face. She hears a heavy groan from within and calls, “I know you’re in there, Potter! Let me in!”

The door opens and the wrong face, wrong tousled black hair peeks out. “Lily Evans?” Sirius mumbles, voice croaky with sleep. “What the everloving fuck are you doing here at this ungodly hour?”

“I’m looking for Potter. What the fuck are you doing here?”

“Was tired. His bed was closer.”

“Your room is next door.”

His eyes widen. “You came to see Prongs. You came to his _room_. In the middle of the night! Wait till I tell him, he’ll cry tears of joy —”

“It’s morning, Sirius. Where is he?”

“First of all, he’s a fucking maniac. An absolute lunatic. I’m really worried about him, Evans, I think he’s finally gone off the deep end. No care for human decency, no concern for _himself —_ ”

“He got up around 6:30 to work out,” says another voice, and the door opens a little wider to reveal Remus, disheveled but nevertheless looking far more equipped for human interaction than Sirius. “I imagine he’s still at the gym.”

“Isn’t the whole point of being a senior that you no longer have to share your dorm room?” Lily asks.

“I’m pretty sure it’s that you don’t have to go to class anymore,” smirks Sirius, and Remus sighs.

“You still have to go to class, Sirius, I keep telling you —”

“The No-Class rule was a lie?” squeaks yet another voice from inside the room.

Lily’s phone buzzes with two new texts in quick succession.

> **Mary:** oh boy did you ever
> 
> **Mary** : I heard you guys even left the party together ;) ;) ;)

“I have to go,” she says aloud and leaves them to squabble. Sirius’ voice, chiding, “Don’t listen to Remus, Peter, he’s a heretic and a buzzkill,” drifts down the hall after her.

He’s not on the field, or the track, or any of the machines in the gym, but eventually Lily finds him in the locker room, evidently straight out of a shower. He’s standing shirtless next to an open locker, toweling off his hair, and nearly jumps out of his skin when he sees her.

“Evans! You do know this is the men’s locker room, right?”

“Is there anyone else here?”

“There’s me, I’m very much here,” he points out indignantly, hastily pulling a t-shirt over his head.

“Anyone else?”

“Not as such,” he admits.

“Good,” she says, and locks the door. “We need to talk.”

“Ah,” he says, and has the grace to look sheepish. “Last night. You feeling okay today?”

“That’s not the point,” she snarls, and thrusts her phone into his face. “Care to explain this?”

“Well, at first glance, it looks like someone’s incapable of minding their own business,” he notes. “Who the fuck is ‘reetskeet,’ that’s the worst handle I’ve ever —”

“Rita Skeeter. Freshman. Also not the point. I mean the content of the photo, not the picture itself.”

“Uh, you kissed me. I’m not sure I understand the source of your confusion.”

“Ha!” she scoffs.

“What?” he asks.

“ _I_ kissed _you_. Sure, that sounds likely.”

“You did!” he insists. “There I was, minding my own business, when a ginger missile comes flying at me and attaches herself to me at the face —”

“And why the _hell_ would I ever do that?”

He shrugs. “The heart wants what the heart wants, I guess.”

“My heart wanted none of this,” Lily hisses.

“Listen, Evans,” he says, “I’m not really sure what you want to hear. You came up and kissed me, I don’t know why. I’d like to think it’s because you finally realized that you’ve been deeply in love with me for the past three years, but I’m kinda guessing it had something to do with the fact that you were absolutely wasted.”

“So what, you took advantage of me?”

“What? Jesus, Evans, no. Nothing happened.”

“Mary said you left the party with me.”

“Of course I did! D’you really think I’d let you stumble around that kind of party when you’re that far gone? I took you home.”

She opens her mouth, but before she can say anything, he jumps in again. “Alice was there, you can ask her. She helped me get you into bed and, er, clean up. And then I left, I promise.”

Anger starts to ebb out of her and is replaced by mortification. She tries very hard not to think about what he meant by “clean up” and prays to all the deities she can think of that it has nothing to do with the stain on her carpet or the acrid smell that was lingering in her room when she woke up.

Potter’s watching her closely. “You alright, Evans?”

She squares her shoulders. “I’m fine.”

“Did you really think I’d do something like that?”

“I don’t know, you seemed to think it was fine to verbally harass me for the past three years. And you didn’t look like you were objecting in the photo.”

“I was surprised, I didn’t have time to react!”

“Care to explain the placement of your hands?”

“I was trying to push you off!”

“Uh huh.” She glares at him, arms crossed. He’s definitely flustered, and it’s kind of nice to see James Potter actually ruffled for once. “Well,” she says, and unleashes her carefully constructed exit line: “at least now you’ve kissed Lily Evans. You’ve got your wish.”

She turns on her heel and marches to the door.

“That wasn’t my wish,” he calls after her. She looks back and raises an eyebrow.

“I mean sure,” he shrugs. “Beggars can’t be choosers, and all that. It certainly wasn’t the _worst_ thing that ever happened to me. But it was a terrible kiss.”

“Excuse me?”

“Maybe the worst kiss of my life,” he continues. The flush has gone out of his face, and now he starts packing his gym bag in a performatively casual manner, not even meeting her eyes.

A frankly pathetic cry for attention.

“Really,” she deadpans.

“Yeah, it was all wet and sloppy. A bit like making out with an eel, actually. But like I said, you were trashed. It’s not your fault.” He zips his bag, finally looks up, and smirks at her. “I won’t hold it against you.”

Annoyance, a deep, visceral annoyance that only Potter seems capable of generating, stirs up within her as he turns around to shut his locker. Part of her still wants to storm out and away from him, another part wants to smack that smirk off his face, and a third very secret part that should never have existed in the first place can’t stop thinking about that photo, about her mouth on his, about his long fingers rucking up the hem of her shirt.

If she leaves now, she reasons, he’ll have gotten the last say, and that’d be absolutely no fair.

So she stalks over, plants her hands on her hips, and looks up at him. “Alright, new deal,” she says. “One kiss — one _real_ kiss — and then you get it out of your system.”

He freezes, and her vindictive heart whoops in triumph. “Are you serious?”

“No, I’m Lily.”

“Hilarious,” he says without a smile, and his eyes dart from hers to her lips and back again. “What constitutes a ‘real kiss’?”

“One where we’re both sober, consenting, and on the same page.”

“And?”

“Tongue is acceptable.”

He barks out a humorless laugh. “I see. Anything else?”

_Hands on her waist fingers pressing into her hips her shirt riding up —_

Lily swallows. “Touching is permitted.”

“Okay,” he says.

Neither of them has broken eye contact, but neither has moved closer, either. Potter hasn’t so much as leaned in. He really does seem frozen, as if, after all that, he’s afraid to even touch her.

“This offer expires in 15 seconds,” Lily says, before she can lose her nerve.

Potter makes a strangled whine in the back of his throat. Lily feels like his eyes are boring through her. He has the most curious, intense expression, and she doesn’t really know how to interpret it.

“Ten,” she says.

“Are you sure?” he asks softly.

“Five,” she whispers.

And then his lips are on hers.

The kiss is gentle, even sweet. His mouth stays closed but his lips caress hers, slow and soft. His hand comes to rest on her neck, tilting her head up towards him.

It’s not enough, though, because she needs (for reasons she will neither acknowledge nor interrogate) for him to know that she’s the world’s greatest kisser, so she opens her mouth and kisses him fiercely. He responds in kind and she pushes him backwards into the locker, rising up on her tiptoes to wind her fingers into the long black hair he’s ever so proud of. His arms wrap around her waist and he tugs her in closer to him. She bites his lower lip and he straight up moans into her mouth.

“This doesn’t mean I like you, or anything,” she pants into his ear.

“Of course not.”

“I still think you’re an arrogant bastard.”

“Okay,” he says, and flips her around so that she’s pinned against the locker.

And she does hate him, she really does, but damn if that boy isn’t the hottest thing on two legs. She surges back up into the kiss and it’s so fucking good. She could do this forever, just kiss him for days and days and days. She could kiss him professionally. She could kiss him for free. She could pay to kiss him.

 _Or_ , equally acceptable, she could knead his ass (God, what an ass!) just like this while he kisses her neck and runs his fingers down her back like _that_ _holy shit_.

She melts under him, feels her neck and chest and legs dissolve until all that’s left is the heat in her stomach and, oh, that’s actually a little lower than her stomach, isn’t it?

His leg slides between hers and she can’t help but grind into his thigh, just a bit, and gasps at the friction. She realizes that she’s muttering asinine drivel like “yes” and “please don’t stop” and other nonsense and she can’t quite bring herself to mind, really. She also realizes that one of his hands is between the two of them, hovering over the clasp of her jeans.

His eyes meet hers, and there’s that expression again, intense and so very serious, like he’s trying to find some kind of answer in her eyes.

“Lily,” he breathes. “Do you want — Can I —”

It’s more hesitation than she has time for, so she reaches in for him to unbutton her own jeans. But instead of taking advantage of her obvious invitation, he just kisses her again, softly and gently.

“What do you want?” he asks.

This is absolutely the moment to turn back. Technically, that should have happened many many moments ago, somewhere between the offer and the kiss and the moans and the unzipping, but she’s still here apparently, so really now is the time to beat it, Lily’s rational mind argues. Absolutely nothing good can possibly come of this.

On the other hand, all of the rest of Lily can think of at least one _really really_ good thing that could come of this. That part wins.

“Touch me,” she says, and he raises an eyebrow.

“Just touch?”

The words come spilling out. “I want you to use your fingers on me.” She blushes deeply and hastily adds a quick “Please,” because she was raised with manners, after all.

Potter obliges and dips his hand inside her waistband. It’s like an electric shock when his fingers find her clit and some kind of high-pitched squeak falls out of her traitorous mouth. “Is this okay?” he asks.

She nods as vigorously as possible and opens her mouth to say something real clever but he starts to rub slow, deliberate circles and all that comes out is an “ _Oh_.”

He kisses her neck again and she buries her face into his shoulder, gasping against him as he fingers her. In what feels like both a thousand years and no time at all, she’s coming. He rubs her clit through her spasms and one of her hands is buried in his hair, her teeth are clenched around his shirt as she tries to muffle herself, and she slumps forward into him as her legs turn to jelly.

She opens her eyes and looks up at him. He’s smiling an odd smile as he steadies her and sets her back on her own two feet, not quite a smirk and not quite a grin. She feels like she should be able to identify that smile, to know what it means, but her brain feels a bit like mush at the moment and nothing’s coming to her.

Now is the time to say something. Like maybe “gee, thanks for that incredible orgasm” or “I can’t wait to replay this moment the next 300 times I masturbate” or “this was a big fucking mistake.” But nothing makes its way from her brain to her mouth, so instead she just gapes at him and tries to catch her breath.

James Potter slings his gym bag over his shoulder and presses a final kiss to her forehead. “I’ll never get you out of my system, Lily Evans,” he says, and then he’s gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so for context I wrote this in honest to god 2018 and found it sitting in my google drive and thought I should finish it... so more chapters to come as soon as I can clean them up


	2. Chapter 2

She spends the next week doing everything possible to avoid him. But it’s a lot of work now trying to avoid two people on a relatively small campus, so she has to resort to some fairly underhanded moves that she’s not proud of. But it’s worth it, she tells herself as she copies Potter’s practice schedule into her notebook, because the alternative is to never leave her dorm room or the newspaper office, and she’s pretty sure she’d die of boredom. 

But in all her careful calculations she forgets to factor in the weather. And that’s how she runs into Potter in the stairwell on her way down to dinner.

“Evans,” he says, blinking, as if he’s as surprised as she is.

“Aren’t you supposed to be at practice?” she blurts out, like an absolute idiot.

“We ended early,” he says, not taking his eyes off her. “Rain.”

And, oh yeah, he’s soaking wet, and there’s mud and grass staining his clothes, and his white t-shirt is sticking to his chest and he smells like sweat and it’s not that bad, actually—

“Can I, uh, go up?” he asks, gesturing at the stairs behind her. He looks amused now. “There isn’t a toll or anything, is there?”

She rolls her eyes, puts her game face back on. She’s not going to be thrown off her guard by _Potter_ , of all people. 

“No toll,” she retorts, as disgusted as she can manage, and steps out of his way, back to the railing. “There’s nothing I want from you.”

He grins, cheeky and flirtatious, and god she’d almost forgotten how fucking _annoying_ he is. “Nothing?” He steps forward. “Really?”

“Nothing,” she growls. She’s not going to be one of his _conquests_ , she’s not going to let him think he has any kind of sway over her.

“Alright,” he says, and the grin fades from his face. “But we maybe should talk, don’t you think?”

“I don’t want to talk to you.”

He laughs and opens his mouth, but she hears the front door open just downstairs, the laughter of students filling the hallway. And, since the only thing more mortifying than this entire situation is the thought of witnesses, she grabs his wrist before he can say anything and drags him through the nearest door.

“You know,” he starts as she locks the door behind them, because he’s incapable of being silent for a whole fucking second, “when you said you didn’t want to talk, I thought that meant “Leave me alone,” not “Let’s have a sexy rendezvous in the laundry room,” but as always, Evans, you continue to surprise and amaze.”

“That’s not what this is,” she snaps. “I just don’t want to be seen with you.”

“So this is a _secret_ rendezvous.” He leans back against a dryer, scandalized. “Lily Evans, am I your _kept man_?”

“I am absolutely not keeping you,” she grits out and stalks towards him, stabbing him in the chest with her pointer finger. “Listen. What happened last week was a mistake.”

“Okay.”

“And it’s never going to happen again.”

“Okay.”

She’d honestly been expecting more pushback, after the way he’s been chasing her for years. But he’s just looking at her with — well, it’s honestly hard to say what that expression means. He’s listening. He’s waiting for her to say more.

“Well then,” she says, and steps back. “As long as we’re understood.”

“Loud and clear,” he agrees. “But you enjoyed it, right?”

She flushes immediately. She doesn’t know which is the source of her blush: the fact that she absolutely had enjoyed it (far, far too much), or the weird note of vulnerability that had crept into his voice just then, as if he really didn’t know, as if he really wanted to make sure it was okay. The thought of making cocky, brash, obnoxious James Potter sound so _shy_ , so unsure, should have been hilarious. Instead it was just hot.

“That’s not my point,” she blusters, but Potter understands her meaning enough for a smirk to return to his face. “The point is — we’re done. We’re done here.”

“Okay.” Potter shrugs. “One last kiss for the road?”

“I _just said_ —”

“Relax,” he laughs, pushing off from the washing machine. “I’m fucking with you.”

But Lily will not be fucked with, and she will also be the one who gets to leave first this time, so she grabs his arm as he starts to move past her towards the door. Before he can say anything witty, or she can think twice about her actions, she pins him back against a dryer and does her best to kiss the smugness out of him. She can feel her shirt getting damp where she’s pressed against his chest and vaguely realizes that she’ll have to change before she can go to dinner, but it’s hard to focus on things like that when his hands reflexively come up to her hips and he tilts his head to the side to deepen the kiss and he smells _so good_ and her whole body feels like she’s on fire.

Then she pulls away and he’s looking down at her, wide-eyed and dazed, mouth hanging ajar, lips slightly swollen, and it’s maybe the hottest thing she’s ever seen.

“This is never going to happen again,” she repeats, as fiercely as she can, and sweeps out of the room, triumphant.

  
  


But it does happen again. And again and again and again. He fingers her under her skirt in the library, he circles her nipple with his tongue in an empty classroom, he kisses up her thigh in his dorm.

“We shouldn’t do this,” Lily says.

“Do you want me to stop?” Potter asks, face hovering inches from her pelvis. She knows he would in an instant, knows him well enough now that he would never push her farther than she wanted to go, knows from experience that he’ll do literally anything she says in bed.

Lily’s entire body is a raw and exposed nerve. If he touches her, she will explode. If he doesn’t touch her soon, she will implode.

She squeezes her eyes shut. “Don’t stop,” she whispers, and feels the warm heat of his mouth enveloping her.

When she comes she muffles her moans in his pillow, his hands, his mouth.

She’s really not sure what, exactly, Potter’s getting out of this. No orgasms, that’s for sure — he never even takes his pants off. She’s offered to reciprocate, but he always shrugs her off. It’s definitely not what she expected after years of him harassing her for a date, and it’s not like he doesn’t groan when she bites his lip, or pause to pant against her neck when they’re making out. It’s not like she doesn’t feel him, hard in his jeans, when he presses against her and she wraps her legs around his waist.

(And it’s not like she never thinks about touching him, about taking him into her hand, her mouth, about running a hand over his chest as she sinks down, slowly, onto him —)

Lily is not going to pretend to understand what goes on in a mind like Potter’s. And sure, if she weren’t so avowedly disinterested in Potter’s opinion of her, she might even be a bit insulted that he’s apparently so averse to her touching him. But she _doesn’t_ care, so she won’t ask.

Besides, they don’t talk about this _thing_ between them, except when Lily reminds him that it isn’t a thing, that it doesn’t matter, that it probably won’t happen again. And Potter always accepts it without comment or complaint.

The worst and best part of all this, the part that Lily will never admit to another soul even on pain of death, is that James Potter is the best lay she’s ever had. And so yes, she’s quite serious when she says that this shouldn’t go on, and yes, Potter is an asshole with an ego larger than most planets, but he’s turning out to be a hard habit to break. 

  
  


“Evening, Evans.”

She looks up from her laptop to see a familiar twinkle in his eyes and a wide grin stretched across his face.

“What are you doing here, Potter?” she hisses. “This office is for newspaper staff only and I don’t particularly remember hiring you.”

He shrugs. “Maybe I just missed you.”

Her face flares red. “Shut up,” she says. “I’m working right now, and I don’t have time for your bullshit, so if you don’t have any _actual_ business here, kindly fuck right off —”

“James!” chirps a voice from behind Lily. She whirls around and there’s Phoebe Mulligan. “I promise we won’t disturb you, Lily, but this was the only time he was available for an interview.”

“Ah. Right.” Because he’s the captain of the rugby team, and of course he’d have more going on in his life than just her. She even remembers Phoebe proposing the profile, and feels like an idiot.

“My desk is right this way,” Phoebe stammers. Lily notices that the sophomore is blushing, and, really? That’s what passes for professionalism amongst her staff?

“Lead on, milady,” Potter says, and Phoebe beams.

Lily goes back to her work and tries not to listen in on their conversation. Everyone else has gone home for the night; Phoebe must’ve stayed late for the interview, and Lily has too much work left to do. Besides, she’s not going to leave Phoebe and Potter alone in the office. That’s just unprofessional.

She tries to refocus her attention by chugging more coffee every time she starts to eavesdrop. She runs out of coffee.

She’s waiting for the new pot to start brewing, impatiently drumming her fingers against the little table that holds the machine. It’s taking forever. Unfortunately, this places her right next to Phoebe’s workspace, and it’s harder to avoid eavesdropping.

“So you’re the campus rugby star and kind of a total heartthrob. Are the girls all over you or what?”

Lily sees Potter raise an eyebrow. “That’s kind of an odd detail to include in a sports profile for a college newspaper, isn’t it?”

It is. It’s an absolutely absurd question, and if it makes its way into the article, Lily will absolutely cut it, thank you very much. More finger drumming. Why hasn’t the coffee started dripping yet?

“Readers might want to know,” Phoebe says, and Lily can _hear_ the bat of her eyelids in her voice. “Is there anyone special in your life?”

Lily’s breath catches in her throat. She stops pretending not to listen and allows herself to stare at Potter, waiting for the answer. He tousles his hair with one hand. Horrible images flash through her head: Potter smirking and spilling the beans, her ugliest secret splashed as a headline across her own newspaper, her reputation ruined in one short moment. She stops drumming her fingers and grips the table so tightly her knuckles turn white.

“Well,” Potter begins. “There’s about 1,600 students at this college. It’s a small community, and word gets around pretty fast. I figure if it’s anyone’s business to know, they already do.”

Lily lets herself exhale softly and relax her hold on the table’s edge. It’s okay. Everything’s okay.

That’s when Potter turns and looks right at her. “Evans,” he asks, “Why is coffee spilling everywhere?”

Phoebe finishes her interview and leaves shortly afterwards, and Potter stays behind to help Lily clean up the mess and fix the coffee pot. 

“You don’t have to do this,” she insists. “I can manage fine on my own.”

He shrugs. “Maybe I just like the pleasure of your company.”

“I’ve got a ton of work to do.”

“You seem stressed,” he says, but his voice is soft, not teasing. “Can I help?”

It would be unprofessional to say yes. It would be unprofessional to kiss him, to moan into the kiss, to sit on her desk with her legs wrapped around him, to clutch his hair while he kisses under her jaw, to grope around the surface of her desk for purchase while he gently, slowly fingers her, to squeeze a pen so hard that it snaps when she comes, gasping, against his cheek.

“This is the last time,” she assures him. “I mean it.”

He nods and kisses her.

  
  


“James has been hitting on you less,” notes Mary at lunch. “Do you think he’s finally gotten over you?”

“Seems like it,” Lily says, not looking up from her salad.

“Maybe he has a real girlfriend,” Mary muses.

Lily stabs a crouton with her fork. It snaps in two and one half flies across the table. “Why is everyone on this campus so invested in Potter’s dating life?” she asks.

Mary shrugs. “Not much else going on, I guess.”

Lily glances over and sees Potter at the far end of the dining hall, sitting with his friends. He catches her eye and gives her a small smile. She looks away. “I guess not.”

Alice appears at their table, flushed and breathless. “Guys, you have to see this,” she says, and throws a flyer down on the table.

  
  


“How do we know that this is necessarily a bad thing?” asks Davey Gudgeon. “I mean, ‘Free Speech Society,’ that doesn’t sound evil.”

“Well, let’s try using context clues,” says Sirius Black. “I saw Avery and Mulciber handing out flyers in the library, so I’m guessing that they’re not exactly organizing a poetry slam.”

“What were _you_ doing in the library?” asks Mary, and Remus goes pink.

“Maybe I wanted to catch up on my reading,” Sirius shoots back.

“ _Enough_ ,” says Kingston, rubbing his temples, and Lily is suddenly grateful that she isn’t the one running this meeting. “Sirius is right. We know Avery and Mulciber are involved, so Snape probably is too. They’re testing the waters now, and we should probably be prepared for more things to come.”

“So basically, what we do now is the most important step, right?” says Lily. “They’re waiting to see how everyone reacts before their next move.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t do anything,” suggests Frank Longbottom. “Pretend we barely noticed. If we don’t give them the reaction they’re waiting for, maybe they’ll go away.”

“No, we have to respond. Send a message,” says Potter. Lily’s surprised to hear him speak up. To be honest, she’s still surprised he and his crew came to this meeting at all. It doesn’t exactly seem their style.

“Potter has a point,” she admits, and a small part of her dies inside. “They’re recruiting. It’s important to make sure the rest of the campus knows that we won’t put up with their shit.”

“Exactly,” says Potter. “It’s easier to punch three idiots in the face than fifty. Let’s keep their numbers low.”

“Nobody’s punching anyone in the face,” Lily sighs.

“Aw, Evans, you’re no fun,” whines Sirius.

“What if they deserve it?” asks Potter.

“We have to stay non-violent. I suggest we start by putting up our own posters,” Lily says, turning back to Kingsley.

“And if they deface them or take them down, _then_ can we punch them?” asks Sirius.

“There will be _no_ _punching_ ,” Lily grits out. “If we’re forming this — whatever this is — we should make some sort of policy for taking action so we’re all on the same page. I think we should adopt nonviolence as our primary strategy.”

“But it’s not like they won’t be willing to escalate things,” says James.

“Well, we’ll have to be better than them.”

“What if it reaches the point of violence? What if our message doesn’t make enough of an impression otherwise? I don’t think we should rule anything out just yet.”

“I understand that you are incapable of thinking beyond your animal instincts,” Lily says, “but this is an actual serious situation. The adults in the room are trying to find a viable solution. Feel free to join us when you have something valuable to contribute.”

“Maybe I just don’t like the idea of three assholes making an entire campus feel unsafe,” argues Potter.

“Maybe the rest of us don’t want to be branded as violent radicals just because _you_ can’t resist a fight,” Lily says. “Could you try thinking about the bigger picture for once?”

“I am!”

“Lily! James!” shouts Kingsley. Lily realizes that the two of them have both at some point stood up and are shouting at each other while the rest of the room watches on. Her face is still burning with anger, but she sits down and looks pointedly away from Potter. She hears whispers in the back of the room and slinks down further in her seat.

“I liked Lily’s poster idea,” says Alice meekly.

“Great,” says Kingsley, relieved. “Do you want to take point on that?”

After the meeting, Lily pulls Potter aside into an empty classroom and shuts the door.

“Okay,” Potter says. “Are you just going to yell at me more? Because whatever you think, I am actually taking this seriously —”

“Shut up, I don’t care about that,” Lily says, and then reevaluates. “Well, I do, and you’re still wrong, and I’m definitely going to yell at you more later.”

He rolls his eyes and nods. “Of course. So what’s up?”

There’s a lot she wants to be able to say. That she’s terrified of what might be coming their way, that she’s been on edge ever since she saw the flyer, that she can’t stop thinking about how Severus must be involved in this, that this whole situation is eating at her from the inside.

But this is Potter, and they’re not actually friends, are they? She can’t imagine anything more humiliating than showing that kind of vulnerability to him. Better to save her actual feelings for when she talks to Mary.

So instead she just says, “I’m feeling really tense. With all that’s happened.”

His expression instantly softens. “Of course. Do you want to, er, talk about it?”

He looks so earnest and sweet. It’s almost hard to remember that he is the last person on earth she would ever want to talk to. 

“I’d really rather not,” she says. “I just wanted a distraction.”

“Ah,” he says and smirks. “I’m good for that.”

“If nothing else,” she sighs, and kisses him.

  
  


She channels her feelings into writing. (She channels them into other things too, culminating in a scream that Potter muffles with his mouth, but the writing is the only part anyone else can know about.) And it’s good, too, a thoughtful and well-researched op-ed about the history of the real Free Speech Movement, the dangers of the far-right’s appropriation of “free speech” rhetoric, the concerns raised by the flyers seen in the library earlier that week. She’d print it even if someone else had written it.

She feels pretty good about it. Obviously it won’t accomplish anything, and she didn’t have enough evidence beyond hearsay to name names, but at least it might spark a conversation and that’s the best she can hope for. When the issue comes out, she buys herself a latte to celebrate and sips at it as she meanders back to her dorm.

“Lily?”

She freezes. Another whole-body freeze, like a rabbit sensing a fox. And that’s absurd, she’s not a rabbit, but when she hears his voice all her confidence melts away and she feels nothing but panic rising steadily in her chest.

She walks faster.

“Lily,” Severus says again, pulling into her periphery. He looks a little rodent-like himself, eyes darting to the side, and if there were any justice in the world _he_ would be afraid of _her_. “I saw your op-ed.”

She doesn’t respond, but it’s too late, he’s already fallen into stride with her.

“Can we talk about it?”

“What’s it to you?” she asks, before she can stop herself.

“Lily —”

“It’s not just your friends, right? You’re part of this stupid society too?”

“It’s not stupid,” Severus says, and there it is. She was already pretty sure he was involved, but hearing him confirm it feels newly devastating.

_I really thought I knew you_ , she thinks. _I really thought you knew me._

“It felt kind of one-sided,” Severus is saying, and Lily squeezes her latte so tightly that the cap pops off. Foam dribbles down the side of the cup.

“It’s an op-ed. It’s my opinion.”

“I just feel like it would be more fair if you published both sides. You didn’t represent our position fairly.”

_Our_ position.

“I’m not giving you a platform.” Her dorm is within view now and she only has to listen to him for a moment longer. She can do this.

“Lily, please,” Severus says, softly, and it makes all the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. “Hear me out. In the name of our friendship —”

“We’re not _friends_ ,” Lily hisses. “I don’t want to be _friends_ with you. Leave me alone.” He has the audacity to look hurt at that, and her stomach burns inside her, twisted into knots. She drops her latte, still half-full, still warm, into a trash can as she passes it. “I have to go.”

And she’s almost made it, she’s almost shaken him off entirely, she’s almost safe —

“Is it true?” he calls after her. “About you and Potter?”

That makes her stop, just long enough for him to catch up with her. “What are you talking about?” she asks.

Severus’s eyes narrow. “It is true, isn’t it.”

She starts walking again, twice as fast. “I don’t know what you think you heard —”

“Avery said he saw you and Potter sucking face at the library. And I really didn’t think you’d stoop that low, but maybe I didn’t know you like I thought I did.”

_I think I’m the one who didn’t know you_. She's at the door but she’s fumbling with her keycard. Fuck fuck _fuck_.

“So did you do it to hurt me?” Severus asks, leaning against the wall of the dorm. “Or were you just so desperate and slutty that —”

“I have to _go_ ,” she says again, but it doesn’t sound cool or firm, just high-pitched and desperate, and she slams the door behind herself before she has to look at him for a second longer.

  
  


She doesn’t cry. She doesn’t cry because she’s always been tough as nails, because she has nothing to be ashamed of, because she can’t let anyone know that she cares what he thinks. And yes, it stings, and yes, tears are trying to prick at her eyes, and sure, when he calls her a slut she hears in that word his betrayal from last year like it’s happening all over again, but she doesn’t cry because crying is simply not an option.

Instead she goes straight upstairs to find Potter.

He’s working in his room with the door open, so she waltzes right in (thank god, his friends aren’t here) and locks the door behind her. Startled from his book by the click of the latch, he looks up from his desk and a grin breaks across his face at the sight of her.

“Lily! Hey, nice piece in the —”

She’s on him before he can even finish his sentence, straddling his lap and kissing him like her life depends on it. She grinds down onto him and lets her hands roam his torso. Potter, however, does not respond as she’d like. He only sinks into the kiss for a second before he seems to have second thoughts and gently pushes her back.

“Whoa, hey, Lils, not that I mind, but, uh, is everything okay? You don’t really seem… Something feels off.”

It’s a very annoying question, because of course Lily’s okay, she’s fine, nothing’s out of the ordinary, she just wants to get off, get out of her head, like always. She endeavors to convey this by pulling her shirt off over her head and then leaning in to kiss him again.

“Whoa, whoa, Lily, hold up.” He’s firmer this time when he pushes her off, and keeps his hands on her shoulders to keep her at arm’s length. “Talk to me. What’s going on?”

She huffs in frustration. “Nothing! I just wanted to hook up, okay?”

“Right, but that’s not really a thing we do.” He looks concerned, and it’s not fucking fair. “You never just come here to hook up. It’s always: fight a bit, kiss a lot, have sex, and then spend 95% of our lives not acknowledging that anything happened. Don’t you lose your plausible deniability if you come to me without an excuse?”

“Fine. We don’t have to do anything,” she says, and gets off of him to go find her shirt on the floor.

“Lily,” he sighs, and takes off his glasses. “Something’s obviously bothering you. Are you sure you don’t want to talk about it?”

“I’m fine,” she insists, tugging her shirt on. All the shame and humiliation she felt with Severus is coming back, now coupled with the fact that she’s made an absolute fool of herself, topless, in Potter’s bedroom. Fantastic. She feels a bit lightheaded and, yeah, maybe she does need to cry, just a bit.

“It’s okay,” Potter says softly, and he’s standing up and coming over to her now. “We don’t have to talk. I won’t ask any more questions. But if you need a place to chill, or you just don’t want to be alone, you can stay. If you want.”

It hadn’t really occurred to her as an option, but yes, she kind of does want. She definitely doesn’t want to face her feelings alone in her own room, and she doesn’t even want to have to talk about this with her friends. And no one will think to look for her here.

So she nods, and he lets her use his bed, and she curls up on it to write up a lab report and it’s just nice, coexisting with him in this space, without any pressure to say or do anything. It’s an odd feeling. She never thought she could possibly be this comfortable in James Potter’s room.

She pauses in her report to watch him. He’s a restless worker: often his face is bent over the textbook, glasses slipping down his nose, hair falling forward and touching the page, but then he’ll shift to lean back in the chair and hold up the book in front of him. When he gets stuck on a particular passage he ruffles his hair in frustration and bites his lip. Sometimes he taps his pencil against the edge of the desk.

He thrums with quiet intensity, full of energy but focused entirely on his work. She’s never seen anyone pour so much of themselves into the small task of reading a textbook.

(She’s beginning to realize that this is just how he does everything.)

“I ran into Severus,” she says aloud, and his head snaps up.

“Snape?”

_No, the other Severus_ , she wants to say, but she doesn’t have the energy. “Yeah. He said some nasty things.”

Potter’s face goes red, and he balls his fists. “That motherfuck—”

“Don’t. He used to be my best friend,” Lily says, because _that’s_ the problem, isn’t it. It’d all be so much easier if she could hate him outright, if she could just see him as “that motherfucker.” But to her he’ll always be Severus, and that’s the worst part about all of this.

“I’m sorry,” says James, and he really does look sorry. He opens his mouth as if to say something, closes it again, and then finally says, “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not particularly,” Lily says.

“Want something to drink?”

“Do you have tea?” Lily asks, and James smiles, a real smile. Not a smirk, not a grin. It’s soft and warm and catches her off-balance.

It’s that smile that she thinks about later on, when she’s trying to fall asleep. It’s that smile that’s fixed in her head when she realizes that she has a crush on the guy she’s been sleeping with for the past six weeks.

  
  


She goes to his room again the next day. Again he grins widely when he sees her, but she wishes he would stop. It’s much worse to see him smile like that when she knows she likes it.

“Lily Evans, in my humble abode, two days in a row.” he says, standing as she shuts the door behind herself. “Careful now, I could get used to this.”

“Don’t,” she says stiffly.

“Calm down, I’m joking.”

“We shouldn’t, anymore.”

He smiles. “I know.” He’s standing very close to her now. She really wants to kiss him. Even more damning, she really wants to hug him.

Instead she pushes him back. “I’m serious. I don’t want to do—whatever this is—anymore.”

James takes another step backward, giving her space. It’s a familiar gesture, like the times he’d stop kissing her to check how she was feeling, or how he’d always pull back if she seemed unenthusiastic. For someone who seemed so pushy when they first met, he’s always so concerned with making sure that she’s comfortable, and she likes that so much that she hates him a little bit for it.

“Is everything okay?” James asks.

_No, I want a hug. No, you’re too sweet and I don’t know what to do with it. No, I accidentally caught feelings somewhere in between all the fingerbanging and I forgot to come up with a fucking exit strategy._

“Someone saw us,” she says instead. “Together. And I don’t think we should. Um. This whole thing, it’s not healthy. I don’t think it should happen again.”

She waits for him to react, but his face is suddenly unreadable. “Okay,” he says.

She doesn’t know what she expected—that he would push back? That he would ask to remain friends, at least? That he would declare his undying love for her and beg for a real relationship? She’s not even sure what she wants him to say, but she thought there would be more than this, at least. She thought maybe, whatever they had, might have meant enough for a goodbye.

But instead she echoes, “Okay,” and slips out the door, and doesn’t let herself look at his face before she goes.


End file.
